by Christine | Jul 25, 2012 | Welcome Column
My dad got me started on the banjo. It took about 30 years. A standard-issue surly teen, I’d taken up the guitar to be Jimmy Page but I’d ended up more Jimmy Driftwood. I’d memorized all the folkie records my folks had lying around. But listening to the man’s records...
by Christine | Oct 12, 2012 | Welcome Column
My friend Jonathon Bluemel is a really fine banjo player. I’m always looking for excuses to play in a band with him because frankly, I just like the way he does what he does. Now I know all the banjo jokes and can recite them with great satisfaction, and I know all...
by Christine | Sep 4, 2012 | Welcome Column
We never thought it would get here, and perhaps even now it hasn’t, but the last two days in Central Victoria, South-eastern Australia, have been warmer and sunnier with that light, deft touch of breeze, than for the past four months of what was, for us, a cold and...
by Christine | Dec 26, 2011 | Welcome Column
I’m glad I got to know Warren Hellman as well as I did. I met him in 2002 at the second annual Strictly Bluegrass Festival. The “Hardly” was added the following year. My wife, Jeanie, and I and our band performed on the stage reserved for local acts, and Warren, who...
by Christine | Jan 31, 2015 | Welcome Column
I’m glad I got to know Warren Hellman as well as I did. I met him in 2002 at the second annual Strictly Bluegrass Festival. The “Hardly” was added the following year. My wife, Jeanie, and I and our band performed on the stage reserved for local acts, and Warren, who...
by Christine | Feb 16, 2019 | Welcome Column
The Didmarton Bluegrass Festival in Gloucestershire, England, is one of the major music festivals in UK, but like all such events it started small, back in the 1980s, as a weekend of picking and singing at a country pub. Many of the local residents hadn’t heard...
by Christine | Jul 26, 2013 | Welcome Column
I realize that I’m late to the game compared to many of you in regard to exploring bluegrass through social media and those of you who are experts in these fields might want to stop reading right here, as I know that I have nothing new to tell you. For the rest of...
by Christine | Apr 26, 2016 | Welcome Column
Long ago, I wrote this after watching happy kids in a documentary on Africa. It speaks to what I am writing about today.BarefootI sat and cursed so longthe shoes I did not ownthat I grew no callusesnor corns to cushion me.And thus I could not runthe race of life with...
by Christine | Jan 6, 2016 | Welcome Column
I have a lifelong war with socks. I never wear matching socks – it’s a habit since adolescence, and that has made my tense relationship with socks (and shoes) a little better, but we’re still basically enemies. I have a LOT of socks, and at any given time, at...
by Christine | Sep 6, 2017 | Welcome Column
I have a lifelong war with socks. I never wear matching socks – it’s a habit since adolescence, and that has made my tense relationship with socks (and shoes) a little better, but we’re still basically enemies. I have a LOT of socks, and at any given time, at...
